The Cape Kiyalighaq Mummy

St. Lawrence Island · Sivuqaq, Alaska

An Old Bering Sea woman of about 400 CE, found frozen on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, with tattooed hands and forearms, the oldest tattooed body in the circumpolar Yupik area.

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Archive Note

The Cape Kiyalighaq mummy is the naturally frozen body of an adult woman uncovered at Kialegak Point on the southeast cape of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, after beach erosion exposed the site in October 1972; she was found by three hunters from Savoonga, the Gologergan brothers, and with the community's permission was taken to Fairbanks for study. Radiocarbon dating placed her at about AD 405, give or take seventy years, in the Old Bering Sea phase of Alaskan prehistory, and she bears tattoos on her forearms, hands, and fingers, with marks over the joints read as protective. She is the oldest tattooed body documented in the Yupik Arctic and a deep-time anchor for the Inuit kakiniit tradition, alongside the later Qilakitsoq mummies of Greenland.

Lineage

oldest circumpolar example Inuit Kakiniit and Tunniit 400 CE · Tradition later Arctic preserved tattoos The Qilakitsoq Mummies 1475 CE · Event